Open source music: Tracking 2.0

Tracking is so 1990s. Nowadays MP3 and other similar formats are
overwhelmingly more popular. But is this really a step forward? A
(very) brief history of computer music, where we are at now, and why I
think people are headed in the wrong direction. And what we can do
about it.

Distributing music as recordings is terribly limiting to hackers and
tinkerers. Music as source code makes dissection, modification and
reuse easier. I will introduce a prototype next-generation tracker
for the web, with the ultimate aim of being a way to not just create
but also distribute music, and to collaborate on music creation:
Github for music, if you will.

As a music creation tool, trackers have been displaced in popularity because they are:

As a music distribution tool, tracked formats have been displaced in popularity because they are:

Not ubiquitous (people may not have playback software)

Underspecified (hence behaviour differs across implementations)

I believe all of these problems are soluble, and I'm going to talk
about how. "modplayjs" (a working title which may well change by
December) is a tracker written in javascript. While capable of
playing existing module formats, it is primarily a playground for
experimenting with shedding two decades of accumulated baggage, and is
currently under heavy development.